The Black Paintings of Goya.

The Black Paintings of Goya, at Juan Jose Junquera, London, Scala Publishers, 2003; 96 pages, $1995 paperback.

Goya, by the agency of Robert Hughes, New York, Knopf, 2003; 435 pages, $4000 hardcover.

Francisco Goya: A Life, according to Evan S. Connell, New York, Counterpoint, 2004; 246 pages, $2600 hardcover.

Goya: "To each story there belongs another," by means of Werner Hofmann, translated from the German, Goya: Vom Himmel durch die Welt, London, Thames and Hudson 2003; 336 pages, $7500 hardcover.

Goya is single in kind of the most popular, in addition one of the least known, of the artists who might make many people's Top 10 list. Compare him, for example, to his almost exact contemporary, Jacques-Louis David, whose work is well documented by the agency of an exhibition history that traces the artist's shifting allegiances to patrons and politics. Beloved at academics with a preference for things French he and his close examiners have for decades been the enslave of scholarly papers, articles and parts Goya, on the other hand, was lengthy ignored by academics in the U He is, after all, Spanish, and for many years be seened beneath the dignity of philosophically oriented art historians, who attend toed to agree with the opinion voiced by way of Robert Hughes in the volume reviewed here: "By tradition, Spain was short of intellectuals and speculative writers; through the whole extent of the centuries it had produc a considerable corpse of imaginative prose and poesy ... but not a single philosopher of more than solely provincial note. In most matters that pertained to intelligence, an unsullied mediocrity prevailed." like a view is easily held single by those who have little knowledge of the Spanish language and whose understanding of Spanish agriculture derives largely from projecting onto Spain what works for other agricultures But academic prejudices do not inhibit the popularity of Goya, celebrated in general-interest publications and--most notably--in Jake and Dinos Chapman's 2003 'alteration of a "Disasters of War" suite, in which they changed all the human visages to husbandman faces or puppy-dog heads.

What biographical information do we have about Goya? There are his alphabetic characters to his childhood friend Martin Zapater. unless these were expurgated, and many annihilateed before their first publication in 1868 through Martin's nephew, Francisco Zapater y Gomez This correspondence disguises the early and middle phases of Goya's career up to the 1790 a period that is also well documented according to records required by the Royal Tapestry Factory and by the agency of the court hierarchy, which Goya at this time was seeking to crush We have a few notes and papers relating to his illness of 1792-93 to court appointments and occasional assignments, and to his donation of the plates of "Lo Caprichos" to the Royal Calcography in 1803 Goya's rouse to Bordeaux in 1824 apted new correspondence to potential patrons in Paris (it is thus that we learn about his experimentation with miniatures in succession ivory). Yet, when we consider the complexity of any 82-year-long life, not to mention that of a prodigious artist living within the best of times and worst of times, we must admit that the documentary resources are limited.

The familiarity of images as it is as the Family of Carlos IV, the Maja desnuda and the Third of May, 1808 become calms us into a false faculty of perception of knowledge about the artist. besides we seem at some of the same height to be aware of the tentative nature of that knowledge, embracing Goya as the perennial Unknown. What besides would make us so receptive to numerous modern claims, often poorly substantiated, that question the authenticity of works in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as the Colossus, the Milkmaid of Bordeaux and the Black Paintings?

Juan Jose Janquera's theories concerning the Black Paintings first came to light in articles published through the Spanish press in spring 2003 An absence of hints to the paintings during Goya's lifetime, seemingly inappropriate descriptions of the nightmarish works as "hellos" and "caprichosos" (pretty and whimsical), the technique used (oil rather than fresco with which Goya was experienced) and the suggestion that the house in which the Black Paintings occupied pair floors was of only common story during Goya's lifetime l Junquera to the conclusion that the works were, in fact, by the agency of Goya's son, Javier. These arguments were repeated in an article in the recent York Times Magazine of July 27 2003 Thus, The Black Paintings of Goya had ample pre-release publicity.

if it be not that in this case, the advance notice is like a movie trailer that details all the best flashs of the film, so that you be perceived cheated when you do pay admission. It is disappointing to find no further substantiation. Junquera's assertion that the geographical division house, or quinta, was of solitary one story, is apparently based upon a document that refers to the residence as "two soft dwellings." Low does not necessarily equate with a single story, as Junquera would like us to believe. He argues that the inventory of the house by the agency of Antonio de Brugada, to which he gives the date of 1828 without acknowledging Priscilla Muller's argument for dating it to the 1830 could not possibly be of that period, since it uses period of times to describe furniture that "the Spanish language did not adopt until the secondary half or end of the nineteenth century" still it is well known that specialized bourns such as these are frequently employed long before they are accepted in dictionaries (the evidence, I suspect, for Junquera's assertion). He also takes issue with the use of oil forward plaster, citing Goya's experience with fresco in addition these paintings were not official commissions if it be not that murals for Goya's own geographical division retreat: it seems unlikely that the aging artist would invest in the labor-intensive fresco technique for works that are, after all, caprichos writ large.